Statelessness Beyond Citizenship: Kurds of Syria and the Struggle for Identity Between Home and Exile

Statelessness is one of the most severe conditions in which humans can find themselves in today. As a predicament that drastically impacts lives and identities, statelessness goes beyond the lack of citizenship to represent an inherent paradox of the dominant international state order. As a tool for nation-state projects and hegemonic identity constructions, statelessness has an extended history that is intertwined with persecution and exclusion in many parts of the world. This study explores the impact of statelessness on identity construction and access to rights between the contexts of the home country and migration. Deploying qualitative research tools, the analysis draws on the life histories of stateless Kurds from Syria, who are currently residents in Germany and Sweden. In ten chapters, the study examines the historical grounds, lived realities and presumptive solutions pertaining to the statelessness of the Kurds of Syria in the shadow of the recent conflict and displacement from the country. Through a chronotopic investigation into individual narratives, I argue for an alternative framework of knowledge about statelessness, beyond citizenist interpretations. This alternative which I call stateless standpoint epistemology has both conceptual and analytical functions, enabling us to understand how individual and collective identities are perceived and negotiated in the chronotopic transitions between various legal statuses (such as the stateless, the refugee and the citizen), and how boundaries of belonging and citizenship are constructed across these transitions. Exploring the entanglements of citizenship and identity in relation to forced migration, the study demonstrates that statelessness is an enduring issue, both as a lived reality of exclusion, non-belonging and political otherness and as a legacy affecting individuals, families and communities. The study explains the intricate relation between statelessness, identity and forced migration in historical, social and critical terms, contributing with new research perspectives that recognize statelessness as an intersectional, structural and political phenomenon, beyond the mere lack of state citizenship. Ett liv utan statstillhörighet kantas av svårigheter. Som existentiellt tillstånd påverkar statslösheten en människas livsmöjligheter och identitet på djupet. Som fenomen utgör statslösheten en inneboende paradox i den internationella statsordningen. Som verktyg för nationalstatliga projekt har